


Long Way Down

by waywardlights



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Suicidal Ideation, will add more tags as they become relevant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:33:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29513958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywardlights/pseuds/waywardlights
Summary: Fall from Heaven, fall from grace, falling apart--for time immemorial it’s been a euphemism for failure, for the hubris that leads to it, and the tragedy that falls after.Some fall further than others.(A fic to explore the timeline of Darius' employment with Mobius)
Kudos: 2





	Long Way Down

_**Undisclosed Location**_

_**June 1996** _

* * *

For at least the third time in the past half hour, Darius tested his chains.

He was bound by his wrists to the metal interrogation table, and his ankles bound to the chair he sat in. His options for movement were very, very slim. He was caged in every sense of the word, and he didn’t fucking like it.

It had been years since Toby’s lessons on how to pick locks with a paperclip, and it wasn’t like Darius had been fucking _practicing_ , but maybe he should’ve, because it’d be handy right about now. He had a paperclip already, hidden under his tongue--he’d picked it up _after_ they’d searched him, off a desk, when they’d been paying too much attention to where they were going instead of Darius’ wandering hands.

He’d expected to be left under guard, considering his charges, but while he was alone in the room, physically, he was a hundred percent sure there had to be cameras watching him from somewhere.

Fuck it. What did he have to lose at this point? His life? Like _that_ had ever fucking mattered.

Carefully extracting the paper clip from under his tongue, Darius held it in one hand and turned the other side’s handcuff towards him. Unfolding the paperclip and re-folding it according to his best guess from Toby’s lessons, Darius began to work at the tiny lock. His plan for getting out of this facility if he got these cuff locks undone--which was a pretty big _if_ \--was still in-progress, but when it came right down to it, Darius didn’t want to escape. Not really.

Honestly, more than anything, he was hoping they’d just shoot him on sight. It’d be a fucking mercy kill at this point.

There was a metallic _click_ from the cuffs, and Darius doubled down, focusing with the intensity of a man willing a fire to start, prodding at the pins he _hoped_ were now deeper in the lock. It sure didn’t seem like he’d made much progress, but _something_ had to have changed. It just... _felt_ different.

The paper clip twisted, something else _clicked_ from within...and the cuff fell free. Grinning, Darius shook the cuff off and began to focus all his attention on the other. He’d just stuck the paper clip into the lock when the door let out a harsh buzzing sound, and a heavy lock made a _thunk_ from somewhere within. The door opened, and two people emerged--a woman in a suit, wearing gloves, and a man in BDUs Darius didn’t recognize, in black, white, and red, also wearing gloves, holding a pistol.

Caught literally red-handed, Darius just shrugged and said, “Figure if you wanted me dead that bad, you’d already have killed me, yeah?”

Either they’d kill him for real or they’d talk to him, and when the woman sat down in the chair across from him, Darius couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. She made a gesture at the other person, the man in unfamiliar BDUs, and he moved around to Darius’ other side, unfastening the cuff Darius hadn’t quite managed to pick free, then unlocking the manacles around his ankles binding him to the chair.

As soon as the man was in a position it’d be difficult to fight back--just behind Darius’ chair--Darius launched himself to his feet and shoved the chair backwards into the man, who stumbled, caught unaware by the sudden attack. Whipping around and jerking his elbow into the man’s face, blood gushed from his nose, and in the chaos, Darius wrenched the pistol out of the man’s hands.

He turned around, the barrel pointing at the woman...but he found himself staring down the barrel of _her_ gun. She had to have hidden it in her jacket somewhere. They held that stalemate for a short moment before Darius scoffed. “You think threatening me with my life is going to get you anything? You’d be doing me a favor.”

“Maybe,” the woman said, the gun still pointed at him resolutely, “but that would be a waste of a perfectly good resource.”

Darius narrowed his eyes. “You’re not government. They wanted to court-martial me for treason. Don’t think they’d care much if that was a waste. Who do you work for?”

“That, I can’t tell you, not yet.” The gun stared Darius down more than the woman did, though he found he wasn’t fazed by either. “But I _can_ tell you that they would hate to see someone with your skill waste away in a lifelong prison sentence.”

Against his better judgment--whatever was fucking left of it at this point--Darius _was_ curious. With a huff, he turned around and handed the pistol back to the guard grip-first; the man took it and leveled a glare in Darius’ direction, blood still dripping from his nose. Darius gave him a cheeky grin, then took his seat again.

“You are Corporal Darius Archer, yes?” the woman asked, opening a file folder--Darius would wager whatever he still had to his name that it had to be his court-martial case--and producing a piece of paper, reading off it. “A London native, no living family that you’re in contact with. You joined the armed forces before you turned eighteen, with forged paperwork, and have had a _mostly_ spotless record for nearly six years...until recently.”

Darius’ hands clenched into fists on the tabletop at the fresh surge of rage. “Yeah. ‘Until recently’ about sums it up.”

“The only other infractions on your record to date were reports of disrespecting your superiors, on a handful of separate occasions, but your general skill, ability to achieve tasks far more complex than those of your peers, and lack of other issues rendered those things negligible.” Lacing her fingers together on the tabletop, the woman asked, “Do you think you could follow someone else’s orders ever again?”

“Not unless you gave me a really good reason to, and I haven’t heard one yet.”

The woman’s smile was cold and empty. “Try this one for size: the government is currently preparing the paperwork for an indictment hearing, where you will be charged with treason. If convicted--and they have all the evidence they think they need to do so--you will be lucky to spend the rest of your years behind bars, provided they don’t simply put you to death.”

“I already told you threatening me with my life won’t get you anything. I don’t care if I live or die. The fuck do I have to live for?”

It was a question that had cycled around Darius’ head ever since he’d first had handcuffs slapped onto him for airing Lieutenant Goulding’s dirty laundry, but he’d never really _said_ it before, and it punched a little wind out of him. What _did_ he have to live for? His brother was dead, the rest of his family could rot for all he cared, and as always, the people he trusted wound up putting a knife in his back.

Any attempt to build a new life for himself landed him here, and there was no fucking reason to believe it wouldn’t keep doing that if he chose to try again. Better to just put himself out of his misery.

“What if I told you,” the woman leaned forward with her elbows on the table, but Darius didn’t copy her, still leaning back in his chair with arms folded, “that my employer could grant you the opportunity to enact retribution on the man who put you here? What if I told you that we could get you out of this situation and give you an outlet for your...residual anger?”

Darius wrinkled his nose as his lip turned down in a scowl. If something sounded too good to be true, it always was. “I’m listening, but I’m not agreeing to anything without knowing details.”

“I work for a clandestine shadow organization that operates...behind the scenes, shall we say, of the world’s daily workings. We move pieces on the chessboard of the world’s powers, and we are always looking for skilled, _loyal_ talent.” With the emphasis on _loyal_ , Darius was starting to put a picture together of the current situation.

Still-- “What does this have to do with Lieutenant Goulding?”

“What do you _think_ this has to do with the lieutenant?”

Annoyed, Darius’ knee-jerk reaction was to snap something back, but he recognized in that split second that they had to be testing him. They wanted skilled people, and that meant they probably also wanted them smarter than a box of rocks. “He worked for you.” Darius balanced an ankle over one knee, cocking his head to the side to gauge how the woman reacted to his answer. “He worked for you, and he crossed you, and I got caught in the middle when he framed me for...whatever he did. Something to do with stealing money, I know that much.”

“Very close.” From the inside of her jacket, the woman produced a handheld tablet, and turned the screen on, turning it around and sliding it in Darius’ direction. “He sold our secrets to people we don’t want to know about us. What you stumbled on was the record of the funds transfer, which Goulding neglected to erase. He knew the disaster that would follow on his heels if it got out, hence, the attempted framing.”

Darius looked down at the tablet and curled his lip as a picture of Goulding, grainy and obviously taken by someone walking down a street, appeared on the screen. “So what’s the deal here? I get your man, I earn a place in this shady ‘organization’ you keep going on about?”

“Essentially.” The woman raised her brows. “Make no mistake, Archer: this is a test. If you achieve this task for us, you will be eligible to join our ranks. You will have assets from our organization to serve as your backup...and your insurance policy.”

So they’d be just as willing to put a bullet in _him_ as they would be his target. Good to know. Darius opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again, brow furrowing. If this deal was, well, the _real_ deal, these people presumably had some kind of diplomatic immunity from most standard crimes. Maybe... “I have one condition.”

“I’m listening.”

“If I get Goulding for you--alive, probably, if you want to ask him some questions--I want permission to pursue two targets of my own. Personal ones. They’re nobodies, really.”

“If they’re ‘nobodies’, as you say, why should you want to pursue them so badly?”

Darius’ hand curled into a tight fist on the table. “I have a score to settle.”

Looking over him with a keen gaze, the woman finally nodded. “Very well. Once Goulding is in custody, we can discuss this side engagement. Our last lead on Goulding is that he has yet to leave the UK, but aside from that, he is at large. Fitzpatrick,” she nodded to the BDU-clad guard behind Darius’ chair, the one with the bleeding nose, “will introduce you to the assets assigned to this operation. As soon as you’ve gone through your meet-and-greet, you’ll be in the field. Any questions?”

“Nope. Pretty sure I can figure things out from here.”

The woman’s grin was pointed, blade-sharp. “We’ll see, Archer.”


End file.
